Secret Kiss Quilt

At the 11th hour, this quilt finally gave itself a name.  I wish I'd known it from the start...it would have turned out differently, I think. 

 Excuse the slippers and hair bands in the background.  I really need to work on places to take pictures...it's hard to find a place that both looks nice and isn't covered in pet hair.

 Close up of some of the hearts.

 More hearts...some are more hidden than others.

 I love the Love Birds fabric. 

 Hearts on the back, with the "secret kiss" in the corner, top right.

 Stack of ready to ship items up for sale right now!

 One perfectly placed heart.

 Crumpled shot.

Next up: strips with a twist, using Martinique I bought ages ago.  Should be a twin to full size quilt when I'm done.  I'm loving it already. Might call it "Twisting Martinique" or something.  Ideas?

Superhero Near Disaster

Long story short, don't keep candles in your sewing room.  I got the bright idea that I could put candles on my space heater and melt them to get the scent, so they wouldn't be lit.  Good thing, or else this puppy would have gone up in flames Friday night.

Yup, one was even red.  Yikes.

After a couple of runs through the wash, it's fine...turns out highly-scented candles are mostly oil, so the wax comes out a lot easier when water/drier temps are high.  I haven't decided if I'm going to donate or sell this one yet. 

Here are a couple of glamor shots:

Seriously, I love this one.  I didn't do much in the way of quilting (I used the button function to "tie" the layers at each vertex), but the fabrics just make me smile.  There has to be a little boy out there who's meant to have this one.

 In other goings on, I made a little wine glass coaster...because I could.  It's quilted, and the other side is blue.  I'll get a picture of that later.  You may recognize the scraps from Abbey's Road.

 I finished the backing for the Valentine's Day quilt, and just now finished quilting and trimming it.  Tomorrow I'll slap some binding on it, take some glamor shots, and throw it up on etsy. 

 Kini's latest trick is telling me via window when she wants to come in.  Or just spying on me, I don't know which.

 MOTU has been recovering this week, so the Lego space shuttle (courtesy of my grandparents) came out to play. 

 Fun Lego dudes.

 Seriously, we had no idea there were SO many pieces, and that they were all in baggies in an as-of-yet undiscernible order.  But that's the fun of it.  :-)

New Member of the Fold

Quilty bloggers, I'd like you to meet Lisa. 

She's been indulging me for months now, oohing and ahhing over endless pictures of projects from wedding stuff to silly little quilts.  I kept telling her I'd teach her to quilt if she wanted me to, and she always said she'd love to...when she had time.  Well, she finally had time, and I think we have a new member of the quilting fold!

I ordered a couple of kids from Quilts for Kids, and they came in on Wednesday.  We decided she'd come over on Saturday, to learn how to quilt.  Here's her first design wall layout (minus the two blocks she was actively sewing together):

Isn't it adorable?!  Basting the quilt:

She was a great student and picked everything up super fast...not that I expected anything less.  :-) 

This was my kit.  I'm waiting to put the binding on until tomorrow, when Lisa will be back so I can show her how to do hers as well. 

After all the girliness of yesterday, I needed a little break...I found this hilarious fleece (far right) and some super hero prints, and now I'm channeling my inner super hero by watching Daredevil and making a totally superhero themed quilt.  I have a new design in mind for this, so we'll see how it turns out.

I also picked up the backing for the Valentine's day quilt, which I'm hoping to be able to baste at some point tonight.

Slicing, Dicing Design Wall

I know I'm a day late with my design wall, but better late than never, right?

First up, I've unearthed the Valentine's quilt from last year.  It's currently about 60x80, so I'm going to add some borders to it, then sometime this week I'll figure out something for the backing and baste that sucker.  Hopefully it'll be ready to ship by mid-month.

Next up, the Shower Quilt.  I've been slaving away, slicing and dicing the fabric for this, and wouldn't you know it?  By sheer dumb luck, I have EXACTLY as much fabric as I need from what people gave me.  My back up plan was to use the stuff I got when I went to pick up our marriage license. That'll go on the back now.

See, not so organized, huh?

Believe it or not, there's a method here.

The final stack up.  Some 430ish strips later, I'm ready to start piecing. 

And a picture of the older brother of the wedding quilt.